RW09903

Slight photo dump. I've been lucky enough to have buddies in the hobby with great coral collections.

Wow. It's been a while since I've updated. I learned fast that a 4 gallon DIY scrubber wasn't sufficient for this system. I ended up sectioning off half of the sump with egg create for a refugium. Chaetomorpha has been doing well since.

Everything looks great! Is this the only system you're running now?

Thank you!

I was finally able to get the green hair algae under under control by July. There is still a little in the sump, however, it's not an issue. I Starting adding a few montiporas and acroporas in August. Most of which are settled and began setting their base. As you can see, this has always been a marathon, not a sprint!

It was a long journey but I was able to successfully combat hair algae over the course of a year and a half. It might seem like a long process, however, quick fixes aren't often the answer and there may be other underlying issues. Here are a few things that worked for me: -Pinch and siphon the hair algae off the rocks and glass into the sump, filtering the water through a mesh filter sock to capture and remove the algae. -Utilitarian fish/Inverts. I have a tang gang + foxface lo and a few tuxedo urchins. From my observation, they both prefer shorter hair algae, and didn't touch the long pieces. -Use GFO to lower phosphates. I used 1/2 the recommended amount of GFO for my tank size. I ran it through a fluidized reactor. Even though the readings for phosphates may be with range, there was likely additional phosphates available, as the algae kept coming back. - Change the feeding regiment. I use to dump a mix of frozen and pellets, daily. The food would swirl throughout the tank and some would travel down the overflow and breakdown in the sump. I still feed daily, however, I cut back on the amount pellets I feed. The phosphorus content in pellets are higher than with frozen. - Use filter socks or something to trap and remove waste. After I installed a filter roller, this process became easier compared to swapping out filter socks biweekly. It helps to keep waste from breaking down in the water column.

Over the weekend, @miggs76 and I took our annual road trip to@Pacific East Aquaculture. Dr. Mac has a very unique selection. I highly recommend a visit if you haven't had the opportunity. Here are a few pieces I was able to hand pick. They're destined for ValaWan's reef after a brief quarantine period.

Thank you, Matt! You have to stop by one day to check out the build in person!

Putting it in perspective, here is how much GHA I was pulling from the display, weekly, before and after the bucket refugium.

Fast forward a few months, I'm still dealing with slightly elevated NO3 and PO4. GFO and increased water changes are helping, however, I wanted ValaWan's reef to stay relatively "natural." I looked into algae scrubbers and chaeto reactors, but for something that grow algae, they were a bit expensive... I started looking through threads on R2R and stumbled on a youtuber (Coral Euphoria) who made his own bucket refugium. This was a great idea for me specifically as a previous attempt to use my sump as a refugium failed. The light spread just gave GHA another place to take over. The bucket refugium idea was a relatively cheaper option because I already had a couple Tunze LEDs laying around. Here is the bucket refugium and results after a month of growth. Thank you @dmatt56 for providing the chaetomorpha!

This is going to look amazing.

Thank you!

Thanks Isaac! Those are chalices from PEA, btw 😅